America needs another Irish-American

This Thursday will be a special day, Alan will take his oath of citizenship. The ceremony will be a group swearing in down in San Antonio. One more Irish American with voting rights! Actually a liberal democrat Irish American with voting rights! Hey we need all the help we can get here in Texas. The right to vote is one of main reasons Alan wanted his citizenship. It was hard for him to sit idly by with all the high emotions that drive our political process here. So come next year his vote will be among those being counted as we head off to the polls once again.

Alan and I have been married for fifteen years now, the past eight we have lived in the USA. We discussed the pros and cons of him becoming a US citizen. But now with a family to think of it put a few more checks in the pro-citizenship category . So this past Spring he submitted his application, had interviews and exams. Fingerprints and background checks (even though it has been just slightly over 2 years since we did this for the adoption). I was surprised at how quickly it all went. I know they have said that due to the slow economy that applications were down. But I really thought it would be late Autumn or even winter before we'd be celebrating such a momentous day.

I often questioned Alan these past few weeks if he was sure about his decision. The state of our political system right now is just in shambles. It's embarrassing at times to see our elected officials behaving in the manner in which they do. One has even publicly said " My only goal is to make sure Obama doesn't get re-elected". He could care less about what destruction he causes our economy and country just so he can make President Obama look bad and potentially lose the election. It really has become a place of lunacy. I do not understand how so many of these politicians have lost sight of doing the best for the people and the country. How does their mind work? How do they live with themselves when the decisions they make or more often fail to make negatively impact so many Americans lives? Has this scared Alan away? No, I think it just gave him all the more incentive to have his voice heard.

So what do you do after you become a citizen? Well for us it has meant THROW A PARTY! BBQ, beer, hotdogs, soda, cake, pies and hopefully lots of fun with friends, neighbors and family. So we have been preparing for this for weeks now. We even went and bought a new gas grill - which I spent 2 hours on Saturday afternoon assembling. We also had to buy a new lawnmower as our old one dies right in the middle of the yard on Saturday. Alan loves his new one, we got a great deal on a top of the line Craftsman. The yard has been groomed and new plants are about. It's looking the best ever. House is slowly getting cleaned and we are preparing to celebrate our newest Irish-American!